Council Circumvents Community on the Annapolis Neck

At last Monday's County Council meeting, Councilman Cohen's colleagues failed to give him the votes to update the zoning on a property in his district. In fact, they deliberately lined up against it. The zoning change, the product of long negotiations between the Annapolis Neck Peninsula Federation and the developer, the Samaras family, would have converted a 6 acre parcel on Forest drive from 2 acres of commercial frontage with 4 acres of residential in the rear to 6 acres of commercial with more forest cover, better stormwater management, and architectural oversight by the community.

Now, some are claiming that the Council Members who blocked the change conducted a backroom deal with an adjacent property owner who has failed to negotiate with community groups.

Left from the Capital's account is the sudden (and ominous) reappearance of former Zoning Director Joe Rutter, a close acquaintance of the property owner in question. There's no way we've heard the last of this sordid situation.

Time to Replace the Rutter

With Executive Owens' imminent departure, it was only a short matter of time before her land-use hitman, Joe Rutter was going to be shown the door. Without exception, the questions most fervently being directed to Executive candidates Leopold and Johnson had to do with their proposed solutions to the broken Planning and Zoning and Inspections and Permitting Departments. Smart enough to see the handwriting on the wall, Rutter turned in his resignation this week.

It's critically important that the next County Executive appoint a Chief Land Use Officer who is going to see to it that the County bureaucracy carry out development in a way that is well-planned, sensible, and respectful of the environment. That individual, who sits above the Directors of P & Z (currently Rutter), I & P (currenly Spurge Eismeier), and Public Works (currently Ron Bowen), should be responsible for implementing the Executive's will on growth, and seeing to it that each of the Executive agencies are carrying it out effectively [organizational chart available here]. The current Chief Land Use Officer, Robert Miller, was, apparently, told by Executive Owens that Mr. Rutter was going to do as he pleased, effectively short-circuiting the chain of command.

The priorities, as I see them, for the next Director of P & Z and I & P have to be:

P & Z
- Ensure that all new development is using the most innovative and environmentally benign stormwater management measures. For instance, Rutter/Owens allowed the developers of Parole to get away with managing only 20% of the stormwater falling on the site. That threshhold is not acceptable, even for redevelopment.

I & P
- Lobby to hire more inspectors, lots of them. Despite the current Directors assurances to the contrary, the Department is badly understaffed, a fact made clear by all the violations that slip through the cracks [see: Little Dobbins Island]

Rutter's Coup is Put Down

On Monday evening, the County Council, unanimously, did the right thing. The Director of Planning and Zoning, Joe Rutter, backed by the County Executive had supported zoning language that would have effectively neutered the Board of Appeals.

The bill would have required the Board of Appeals to assume that decisions issuing from the Office of Planning and Zoning (part of the Executive branch) were correct, and therefore would have placed the burden of proof onto the appellant at Appeals hearings.

The full Board of Appeals showed up before the Council to testify against the language change, arguing, as Board Chair Tony Lamartina did that, "We fear that, rather than honestly responding to citizen concerns, these (county) agencies may retreat into an arrogant indifference, buffered by the knowledge that only the most well-heeled appellants will possess the resources necessary to challenge county decisions."

The Board of Appeals is an arm of the legislative branch, with its members appointed by individual County Councilpeople. Had this effort succeeded, it would have concentrated even more power in the Executive branch, and that, given the excessive power the Executive has under our current system, would have been a bad move for the county.

Thanks to Councilwoman Samorajczyk for sponsoring the amendment that killed this odious effort.

Navigating with an Inflexible Rutter

Yesterday's Capital featured a profile of sorts on the head of the County's Planning and Zoning Department, Joe Rutter. Being an environmentalist, and someone who cares deeply about the future of land use in Anne Arundel County, I suppose I should be deeply offended by Mr. Rutter's very presence, and I that I should denounce him with every ounce of my being, as several environmentalists in the article did. But I'm not offended by his presence, and I don't feel inclined to denounce him. That isn't to say that I don't have significant disagreements with him, because I do, I generally just think the situation is more complicated than that.

From my experience of Mr. Rutter, what you see is generally what you get. He brings a concrete, inflexible mentality to planning and zoning. He wants to rewrite the zoning and subdivision codes (which needed to be done badly), and then follow the directives in those codes to the letter of the law. I don't get the sense that Mr. Rutter is someone who plays favorites, or would loosen the interpretation of the law, if given the chance. I do get the sense that he can't stand to have "looseness" built into the law. He probably has a strong disinclination towards variances and special exceptions, and sees them as evidence of poorly crafted code. He also seems not to play particularly well with others. In the article he speaks derisively of community input, offering, "It's the classic 'how you get a camel' - ask a committee to build a horse." This sort of sentiment, is I think what riles civic activists most.

Executive Owens knew what she was doing when she brought Mr. Rutter in from Howard County. She was getting a land use enforcer. Rutter seems to see things in very black and white terms, and isn't afraid to bulldoze opposition with impolitic sentiments, and he'll be able to do that as long as he retains his loyalty to his political patron, Ms. Owens. This is precisely where Mr. Rutter's achille's heel lies. He has, on numerous occassions that I've witnessed, done the bidding of "the administration" to the detriment of his own department and, what I believe, he thinks is the proper course of action for the County. Mr. Rutter is a straight-edged tool (and I don't mean that to be derogatory, quite the contrary), and the reason we keep getting designs that are out of plumb in the County is not because we lack sound instruments, it's because our carpenter is ill-trained and myopic.